Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Ano ba talaga?

It's the third day of February already. June is drawing nearer and nearer. In just four short months, I'll be a bachelor's degree holder. Four months! That's sixteen weeks. A hundred and twenty days, more or less. I should be deciding what I want to do after graduation right about now. I wrote this on my planner last Monday:

"I've been thinking a lot about the future lately. ... I'm still not sure what I want to do after school. OPTION 1: Leave the country to go and study at the University of Vienna. OPTION 2: Stay here and earn my Masters degree at the University of the Philippines instead. OPTION 3: There is no option 3. Not yet anyways. At least not as good as the first two."

Both options are really good. For me, at least. But both come with their own consequences, of course. C'est la vie, as usual.

I want to take up "deutschen Sprache als einer fremden/zweiten Sprache" (translation: German as a foreign/second language) for my Masters at the University of Vienna. If I do that, I'll be with my mom, dad, and brother. I'll be with my family. We'll be complete. I've been waiting for this for a decade now, more or less. I'll be home. I've never lived in Austria for more than two and a half months but when I'm there, I feel at peace. It's like I have no worries when I'm under my parents' roof. I feel that I am home, so to speak. I could live and study in a very interesting and beautiful place. But when I think about leaving the Philippines, which has been my home for twenty years now, it makes me feel sad. I've noticed that whenever I leave the country for more than two weeks, I get really homesick. What more if I leave it for good?

When I think about leaving my relatives here, the aunts and uncles who have helped raise me, my cousins who have treated me like a sibling, my grandmother; my friends; and everybody else I love, it makes me feel even more awful. I've gotten so accustomed to living here that I can't imagine how I'm gonna start to live a new life. No more commuting in jeepneys. No more pollution. No more ipis. No more traffic. I won't have trouble adapting, I guess, but I will miss everything that has been a part of my daily routine here. Probably not the traffic and certainly not the ipis, but everything else. Austria is such a gloomy country compared to the Philippines. I'm gonna miss the noise and the friendliness and the hospitality. I'm gonna miss Jollibee! Walang Jolllibee sa Europe! So the alternative choice for me would be to take up MA in German at UP.

But...

I've been so lonely here lately that I sometimes think that leaving might be a good idea after all.. To start over. To leave behind everything and every person and every memory that has hurt me here is tempting. To go so far away and start anew might actually make me feel better. Sometimes, I get bored with the monotony of my life here. Maybe it's time for some drastic changes.

You can see how I'm having a hard time deciding. Every pro has a corresponding con and vice versa. I guess I could delay the decision-making for a little while longer but there's no denying the fact I have to decide on it eventually. The future's looming close and there's nothing I can do about it.